How to keep up motivation when editing?

[Nixsua]

Hello Guys! How do you keep you motivation high when doing intense edits? I am working on a AMV currently and only have 4 seconds but I am fairly happy with them. It took me about 2 weeks of off and on editing to get here and looking at the song being 3:40 it can be a little discouraging thinking of the time frame. What do you guys do?



[YouTube embed fixed - Kionon]

[TritioAFB]

keep going until the end, my new amv will take 3 years to finish even though it looks like I'm gone

[Kionon]

What do you guys do?

Three motivating possibilities.

1) Upcoming contest to which I promised to submit. I haven't used this one in years.

2) Some kind of nagging annoyance. I've been very motivated to do a lot of remasters of videos I really like, my own included, because I now have a 4K monitor and the quality annoys me just watching these videos. Also if I get an idea that just will not go away. Like at all. It just keeps running through my head. Then I edit to make it leave me alone.

3) Lots of Coke with Lime. Two or three years ago, we got it back where I live, but I hadn't had a steady supply before that since like 2006 or something. Coke with Lemon is a poor substitute, and I don't find that energy drinks like red bull or Monster give me the same intensity.

Mostly though, I am just not motivated, and so I am very, very slow to finish and release videos. I pick at them bit by bit over a couple of years until they are done. I used to be able to sit down for days or weeks at a time and finish a video. That hasn't been true in... at least ten years maybe.

[Nixsua]

What do you guys do?

Three motivating possibilities.

Thank you for you advice! Do you us an editor to give you pointers?

[Kionon]

Thank you for you advice! Do you us an editor to give you pointers?

Well, I mean, sometimes I send betas (small clips of a work in progress) to other editors for feedback. I don't know that I "use other editors to give me pointers" per se. I've been editing for a long time and have a distinctive style (mostly associated with the style when I was new editor myself), but I don't know that I seek "pointers." Improvement is never ending, but I think the kind of feedback I get would be more like, "Hmm, I wonder if this part might not be more effective if you did X rather than Y" as opposed to "X is wrong, you should do Y" since these are often stylistic opinions rather than about technical flaws with right or wrong answers.

I think I'm more likely to share betas when I am most motivated, I don't think I tend to share them in order to increase motivation.

[Mol]

I think it's good idea to not sate your urge to edit too much. Like edit afew here and there, sometimes less sometimes slighty more depending on the urge to edit. Not so easy to balasnce when your fresh i guess welll if there is no urge then probably time to move on to next project and let it stay a while cold

[CrackTheSky]

Editing an AMV is one of the few times I find that I'm able to just keep going on momentum -- so in other words, once I start editing, I find it difficult to stop. Most of my videos are comparatively simple and use few effects, though, and so aren't very tedious or "intense", which may make a difference. That said, I'm working right now on something not-so-simple and I was up late last night, and then couldn't fall asleep for hours because I couldn't stop thinking about what I wanted to do next (I'm dead tired today as a result -_-).

So, probably not very helpful to someone who doesn't operate that way, but in basic terms -- I find that when I start making something, and I really like what I've put together, that often is my motivation to keep going.

That and contest deadlines.

[Nixsua]

Editing an AMV is one of the few times I find that I'm able to just keep going on momentum -- so in other words, once I start editing, I find it difficult to stop. Most of my videos are comparatively simple and use few effects, though, and so aren't very tedious or "intense", which may make a difference. That said, I'm working right now on something not-so-simple and I was up late last night, and then couldn't fall asleep for hours because I couldn't stop thinking about what I wanted to do next (I'm dead tired today as a result -_-).

So, probably not very helpful to someone who doesn't operate that way, but in basic terms -- I find that when I start making something, and I really like what I've put together, that often is my motivation to keep going.

That and contest deadlines.

Yah my goal is the Anime Expo next year, soo the deadline is not to pressing. Currently I am slowing editing by doing stuff like a few frames a day for masking, the video I posted was about two weeks of work but I am extremely happy with the results. I am trying to pace my self expecting the video to take around 6 months to finish without working hard on it and burning out. If I dont pace my self I usually get around 10-18 seconds done before I lose all interest in editing.

[CrackTheSky]

Yah my goal is the Anime Expo next year, soo the deadline is not to pressing. Currently I am slowing editing by doing stuff like a few frames a day for masking, the video I posted was about two weeks of work but I am extremely happy with the results. I am trying to pace my self expecting the video to take around 6 months to finish without working hard on it and burning out. If I dont pace my self I usually get around 10-18 seconds done before I lose all interest in editing.

Ugh...reading that gave me anxiety. I hope I never again edit something that takes more than a few weeks, lol. I can't keep up my excitement and interest for that long.

[Nixsua]

Yah my goal is the Anime Expo next year, soo the deadline is not to pressing. Currently I am slowing editing by doing stuff like a few frames a day for masking, the video I posted was about two weeks of work but I am extremely happy with the results. I am trying to pace my self expecting the video to take around 6 months to finish without working hard on it and burning out. If I dont pace my self I usually get around 10-18 seconds done before I lose all interest in editing.

Ugh...reading that gave me anxiety. I hope I never again edit something that takes more than a few weeks, lol. I can't keep up my excitement and interest for that long.

I'm super motivated since I have it mapped out in my mind pretty much it's just filling the details and making that is making it tedious.